My Last Exhibit

The 1976 News & Record story headline read, “Hope for Future Grows on Green Hill.” The writer was discussing the opening of an exhibition of two young artists at the fledgling art gallery, Green Hill Center for NC Art, displaying her pastel use of the puny pun. That rainy afternoon opening was held along with the annual meeting, which was directed by the late UNC-G Artist and Professor Bert Carpenter, with over two- hundred people in attendance. Their budget for the new fiscal year was twenty thousand. The article also discussed the budding Alamance County Firehouse Gallery where a young Rod Cooper was curator of creative exhibitions of NC Artists that were bringing in large crowds to a new audience. The N&R critic loved the work of friend and co exhibitor, Robbie Tillotson, praising his style. Her feeling in one sentence toward my work was that I had not yet defined or shaped my voice or sensibility with the brush and pencil.


That afternoon of the opening was glorious in the rain as all my friends and family came and wine flowed, followed with a fun fete. A week later, the same sad writer wrote yet another article, a critical review praising Robbie and questioning my work. That prominent article in the Sunday edition was completely devastating in my mind, convincing me I had no talent or future as an artist. I hid in a deep depression for weeks, wanting to see no one. Not long after, I put down the pencils and brushes. Up until then, I had rarely questioned  my talents. I allowed one silly article to destroy my little world. The writer was totally correct. I had not yet found my voice or style, and gave up that part of my life much too easily. Looking back, I do not regret my actions, because life took other interesting, creative turns.


Robbie Tillotson was living in NYC at the time of the show, hosting college art students in a west side loft owned by a North Carolina university art department. I had met him during college, where he was bullied, scorned, and thought by most as being mad as a hatter. His art was brilliant, and his figures so edgy with color so acid they were almost painful. He towered tall over the heads of everyone with his huge Afro hairdo, platform shoes, velvet jacket and sometimes a boa or long scarf. He was a recognizable Greensboro figure when he a student at UNC-G, getting his masters degree in painting. Robbie achieved fame as a painter and as an actor in New York, burned hot like a blue flaming star that was extinguished much too soon and way too young. He was a friend and character who breezed into my life and out like none I have ever met before, or since. It was Robbie, who took me to see Andy Warhol and the factory. He was right at home in the circus-like shadows of the seventies sexual revolution. It was Robbie who talked me into buying the now funny leather boots one eye-opening 1972 day in the West Village. Outside, he was all flash yet inside was tormented and masked as the figures in his multi-media drawings. If he had survived, his work would now grace every major museum in the country. Two important young artists who saw Robbie’s solo 1981 exhibition in NYC were greatly influenced by his work. Those men were Keith Haring and Jean Paul Basquiat, who became important artists in their short lifetimes. Portraitist Alice Neal painted a now iconic portrait of Robbie. He led the way for many like the Pied Piper he was.


Green Hill Center for NC is now a preeminent North Carolina Gallery showing the finest contemporary art being produced in the state. I am honored to be showing again 36 years later. It's a bit scary to exhibit after so many years, but my mantra is simple, "what you risk reveals what you value." This time around, my old hide is a lot thicker, and I won’t be so easily discouraged by newspaper critics or my very worst critic, myself.